Congratulations! The group mentioned in Case 11.1 has selected you to make the oral presentation to the restaurant association. Although the other members will be present to help answer questions, the primary responsibility for the presentation rests with you.

1. Based on the information you already have, go through the planning stages of preparing an oral presentation. For example, decide whether you are going to try to persuade your listeners to act or to inform them of what your group has discovered. What do you think the audience will be like? How will audience members respond to you? What makes you think so?

2. List the verbal and visual materials you plan to use. Be specific. What types of visual aids would be effective? What kinds of statistics?

3. Assuming that all these materials are available, what pattern of organization would be most effective in presenting them? What type of introduction would best attract the audience’s attention?

4. Compare your answers with those of the other members of your class.

Data from Case 11.1

Six students in a small group communication class spent their group project time discussing the problems faced by a local homeless shelter. One especially significant problem they noted was the great reduction in contributions, especially of food, during economic hard times. As part of the solution section of their report, the students recommended a way of getting more edible leftovers from local restaurants to the shelter, a program they had discovered already in operation in a few other communities across the nation.
The students’ written report earned them an A. Their instructor was so impressed that he showed the report to the president of the local restaurant association. She, too, thought the students were on to something and invited them to make a 15-minute presentation about their project at the association’s monthly meeting. The students were excited that their work might become something more than a classroom exercise and that they might be able to help the homeless shelter, but they did not know how they should respond to this invitation. Should they let their leader represent them? Should they all go and each say a few words? Should they let their most talkative member make the presentation or the one who seemed to be the best critical thinker? The meeting was coming quickly, and they did not know what to do.